Kickoff Events: Wisconsin Reads The Round House

Wisconsin Reads The Round House: An NEA Big Read will take place during March and April across several Wisconsin communities, including Rice Lake, Hayward/LCO, Marshfield, Baraboo, Waukesha, Milwaukee, and West Bend.

Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, which received the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012, explores the fine line between justice and revenge in a Native American community and the “resilience of the [Native] culture,” as Reader’s Digest puts it. “A brilliant chronicler of the American Indian experience,” Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. The Round House is told from the perspective of Joe Coutts, a thirteen-year-old Native American boy growing up on a North Dakota reservation who experiences the trauma of a brutal sexual assault on his mother. Erdrich eloquently describes the impact of the rape on Joe, Geraldine’s husband Bazil, and the small reservation community in which the family lives, as well the complex legal system that prevents many rapes from being prosecuted on tribal lands.

Kimberly Blaeser, Wisconsin Poet Laureate, 2915-16

March kickoff events include a March to End Sexual Assault in Marshfield and Rice Lake on March 10, as well as a Community Conversation about The Round House at the West Bend Community Memorial Library on March 6. Poetry readings and introductory remarks about The Round House in Milwaukee with 2015-16 Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kimberly Blaeser (Anishinaabe) on March 1, Erdrich scholar Julie Tharp in Baraboo on March 8, and Heid Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibway, at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College (LCO-OCC) on March 9. Youth events include poetry workshops at the Indian Community School of Milwaukee with graduate students from UW-Milwaukee Franklin K.R. Cline, Peter Burzynski, and Kenzie Allen, as well as with b:william bearhart at Siren High School and the North Lakes Regional Academy in Rice Lake. Wisconsin public libraries are invited to

Heid Erdrich

order a Birchbark House Kit to explore The Big Read’s youth selection, Erdrich’s The Birchbark House. The Big Read will culminate with A Native American Literary Feast and Festival at LCO-OCC with poets b:william bearhart, Kim Blaeser, Heid Erdrich, Louise Erdrich, and Roberta Hill on April 28. Please see wisconsinreads.org for further information about events and about obtaining a free eBook copy of The Round House.

Funded by the National Endowment for Arts and Minneapolis-based Arts Midwest project, the Big Read program seeks to broaden understanding of the world and communities through the sharing of a good book. The project has received additional funding from the Wisconsin Humanities Council, the Friends of the Marshfield Public Library, the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College Library, the Marshfield Community Foundation, the UW Colleges and many of its

Julie Tharp

departments and programs, including American Indian Studies, the UW Colleges Library, the UW-Barron County Foundation and Thursdays@the U Series, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and others.